Perhaps if he were a more skilled producer and arranger, things would have been better. Unfortunately, his style comes off more like sub-Enya with a beard than a true studio wizard.

Far from being the second coming of Dylan, Oberst is as precious as Paul Simon, but without any sense of rhyme or meter or gift for imagery, puking out lines filled with cheap metaphors and clumsy words that don't scan.

Stay Positive is the most sophisticated and erudite THS have ever sounded, and that's a mixed blessing.

His hardcore following will no doubt celebrate it abundantly. Given its willful indulgence, however, others may find it a tipping point in the other direction.

Matthew E. White's Hometapes' debut, Big Inner, is as frustrating as it is cosmically transcendent.

There's a consistency to the EP that can get lost when a band is trying to work their way toward a longer running time, so although fans might not be getting a big a dose of new Down material as they might crave, they're certainly reaping the benefits of quality over quantity.

It's partly a party album like 2001's Bulletproof Wallets, but freer, more inspired, and tempered with pure street tracks that were missing last time round.

While Currents would have made a decent Kevin Parker solo album, people coming to the album and expecting to hear the Tame Impala they are used to will most likely end up quite disappointed.

He really is pouring everything he has into the whole thing, but there's so much overly earnest, reverential, "let's get back to making real music" energy floating around that you can sense it nibbling away at the desire to make something that sounds like today.

As fine as that is, it comes from someone who is capable of better work, and though this is still recommended to fans, it's ultimately a good album from someone who has been consistently great in the past.

The follow-up delves into dysfunctional relationships, death, and despair with a more polished yet still hooky, jagged indie rock co-produced by De Souza and Brad Cook (Bon Iver, Waxahatchee).

This will still strike most as a mighty odd record, though. Ostensibly much of this record was inspired by former president Richard Nixon (there is even a suggested reading list of Nixon-related books on the sleeve). But there are no direct references to him, and even any indirect ones are so oblique that you'd never make the connection if the record had a different title...

A strangely attractive racket.

Far from being a bold reinvention, a Beatles album for the 21st century, the Martins didn't go far enough in their mash-ups.

It's clear that Working Men's Club are talented and there are a couple songs here that work as singles, but in the future they need to discover their own sound and let go of their tight grip on the past, both distant and recent.

Musically, Midnite Vultures is filled with wonderful little quirks, but these are undercut by the sneaking suspicion that for all the ingenuity, it's just a hipster joke.

Sure, it might be easier to accept if it was called a Damon Albarn solo album, but that's splitting hairs. A lousy album is a lousy album, no matter who gets credit.

Anohni's targets deserve all the fury she unleashes upon them, but that doesn't make this any easier to engage with, even if you agree with what Anohni has to say.

In all, My Morning Jacket may be a journey through the past, but it's also a solid step into something rock & roll has been missing for an awfully long time in the mainstream arena: melody, extremely catchy and well-written songs that aren't afraid of the mainstream, and a love of the great pop continuum that translates into something new.

Despite the often bleak themes at play on the album, there's also a refreshing hopefulness on many of the tracks that speaks to Healy's own recovery and willingness to say yes to even the most frothy pop trend. However, taken as a whole, the album is often as disparate and difficult to wade through as the social-media landscape it hopes to comment on.

Blue Sky Noise, with all of its spit-shine and modern rock luster, may not move mountains outside of its own pained and heavily marketed demographic, but as long as superhero movie franchises remain profitable, bands like Circa Survive will be there to play over the credits.

By and large, Heaven Is a Junkyard finds Powers in pastoral mode. Even in its most orchestrated moments, the album feels primarily reflective and still, like Powers is gazing out on a silent field of wheat and offering us a look into his brain as the thoughts, memories, and scattered hopes all float by.

The Toronto trio is just a ball of heavy genres, lumping together noise rock, post-punk, hardcore, no wave, or any style that might punish a pair of eardrums.

As on the first, the Bragg-written and sung music is the most convincing, since he captures the cadences and spirit of Guthrie's music. They sound like classic, weathered folk songs whereas Wilco's numbers are modern inventions, splicing music that is clearly theirs with Guthrie's words.

While lyrics stick better than hooks here, the album is not without a handful of low-key anthems (including the latter track's high-flying, Auto-Tuned "it's gonna be okay"), and the atmosphere manages to be consistently warm and inviting despite its mechanical veneer.

Swift largely re-creates the arrangements and feel of the original 2008 album, yet her voice and phrasing has aged, giving the music a hint of bittersweet gravity. That said, it's only a hint; Fearless (Taylor's Version) serves the purpose of offering new versions that could be substituted for the originals for licensing purposes. It's to Swift's credit that the album is an absorbing (if long) listen anyway.

Kids looking to anger their parents to the point of losing it should pick up this CD, turn up the stereo, and lock the door.

A great place to start, a fine place to continue if you've been on the Mekons road for a bit, and if you are already a fan, this is essential.

Pale Green Ghosts has a little something for everyone, and while all of the over-sharing can be a little overbearing, Grant's huge, expressive, and oddly comforting voice acts as a sedative, turning even the saddest, raunchiest, and most uncomfortable turn of phrase into a caress.

At only 23 years old, she already has four albums to her credit and while her talent is obvious, a touch more vulnerability wouldn't hurt.

It's overrun by the dissonance of half-step progressions and minor-chord crunch, and it's constantly excruciating.

While the rest of the record never quite reaches that level of instantaneous pop gratification [as "Silk Chiffon"], Muna still turn in some of their better songs from there while also taking their sound to new places.

One Day I'm Going to Soar hardly justifies the almost-three-decade wait, but it's as marvelously idiosyncratic as any longtime fan could hope to expect.

While the moody "Report on an Investigation" does reveal a bit more emotional depth than much of Minekawa's work, Maxi On! doesn't offer much in the way of surprises; however, it also offers few disappointments.

Fans of Far will be able to appreciate At Night We Live as a further evolution of Water & Solutions, but new listeners will have a hard time finding a fresh experience.

The Ones Ahead gets too saccharine at times, and it's not anywhere near as engaging as Glenn-Copeland's visionary folk-jazz records from the early '70s, or his soothing ambient classic Keyboard Fantasies. Nevertheless, it's impossible to find fault with his optimism, and the songs' messages clearly resonate.

Though it's not quite as immediate as their excellent debut album, You've Seen Us...You Must've Seen Us, KaitO U.K.'s band red delivers more tightly coiled post-punk-pop with shouty vocals and elastic guitars, and also delves deeper into the group's experimental side.

Whether autobiographical or a thought exercise, Honey is evocative and often relatable, if in turn inevitably alienating and mercurial.

While first-timers to this era would be best served listening to the parent album first, existing fans who can't get enough of that LP will find Club Future Nostalgia to be an absolute blast.

Many bands get more sophisticated, or at least tighter, as they become more technically accomplished, thereby losing some of their punk edge. That hasn't happened to Title Fight yet... [They] continue to be fresh, if somewhat semi-professional.

The rest of the tracks are more like exercises in sound manipulation and reduction than songs. The approach is no-fault, but Blake pares it down to such an extent that the material occasionally sounds not just tentative but feeble, fatigued, even.

From a few listens, it's clear most of these weren't bumped because they were low-quality; "Doo Rags," "No Idea's Original," and "Black Zombie" stand up to anything Nas has recorded since the original Illmatic.

It can take a while to deconstruct the narrative, but when ignoring the weighty plot, the songs' key themes of mortality, love, and loss still manage to make an impact.

Unfortunately, although Snaith may sound novel expanding upon his indie forebears of ten years ago, when he begins conjuring the ghosts of Krautrock ("A Final Warning," "Bees") or trip-hop ("Lord Leopard"), as he does here, he's entering the company of talented producers who have ploughed the same ground.

There's still a kind of inconsistency in the development of Through the Windowpane, an inconsistency that can't quite work itself out in sweeping strings and vaguely dissonant chords, and unfortunately, this diminishes the power of what the album really could be.

Of the two, Ghosts V: Together is the one to help lift spirits and calm the soul, a welcome escape from the tension and paranoia of the real world.

Written while Jason Pierce was on tour performing Ladies and Gentlemen...We Are Floating in Space in its entirety, Spiritualized's seventh full-length echoes not only that album, but Songs in A & E and Amazing Grace.

This is a good document of Morphine's excellent live show and displays the energy and passion that they played with during the tour that supported their breakthrough album.

It's not as cheeky as Pulp and not nearly as abrasive as British Sea Power; however, Clearlake is equally provocative.

The album as a whole abounds with effective, intriguing atmospherics. It's just that, for all its potential, Fin is merely fine.

With only a few exceptions though, Since We Last Spoke makes the moody Dead Ringer sound like a piece of flag-waving exuberance; instead of the occasional uptempo track, it's brooding and mellow throughout the record -- very nearly a rap singer/songwriter record.

As appealing as the lived-in, swampy jams are, there's a laziness that drifts throughout Hoodoo, apparent in the sauntering rhythms and Tony Joe's mush-mouthed vocals.

Its eight songs containing no masterpieces and Lanois' moody noir production reining in Young's messy signature. So, Le Noise winds up as something elusive and intriguing, a minor mood piece that seems to promise more than it actually delivers.

The album isn't an album of a moments, it's a collection that sustains a mood. A mood that's ragged and slack, but too dulled to charm.

This offers another slight change from Willner's past--enough to maintain perked attention from listeners in love with his sound, while those who are less enamored won't hear enough that distinguishes it from any other Field album.

Apart from the wonderfully elastic, surprising “Us," it doesn't offer anything striking or resonant.

Their voices are strong and clean (maybe too clean) and the parts are played well enough, but when you remove the punk from pop-punk, the attitude goes with it and you'd better be sure that the material underneath is something of greater interest than these largely forgettable acoustic emo ramblings.

It's not so much that Throw It to the Universe is a bad album; but it is quite inconsistent when compared to their best work.

Performance may be lacking in progress, but the effortlessness of their experiments is still very much present, and nine albums in, White Denim remain as playful as ever. Overall, longtime fans of the band are likely to be satisfied, if not dazzled, by their latest effort.

It's clear after four albums that the best Bon Iver is the one that manages to keep the arrangements in check and doesn't swing for the fences. I,I takes many mighty swings and at best knocks out a few infield hits, while striking out far too often.

Overall, Roots Manuva may have a lot to say during the verses, but when his choruses consist of little more than a repeated line shouted over and over ("Awfully Deep," "Too Cold"), listeners won't be hanging around long enough to decipher his rhymes.

Like his two previous studio albums, Solitary Man is sparsely produced by Rick Rubin, and continues the themes of love, faith, and loneliness that their previous collaborations have chillingly embraced.

It all glides by easily enough on its surface, but dig a little deeper and The Magic Numbers reveals itself to be not just a crashing bore, but an irritating one.

The starkness of the arrangements helps draw attention to the distance between the origin of a song and Young's present. Now creeping toward 80, Young doesn't sound fragile yet his vocals display some age-related raggedness. Embracing his weathered, keening voice, Young highlights the tender yearning that runs throughout these songs.

The sad country warmth of "Play the Game" and the starkly fingerpicked front half of "Soon" are soothing in their implied heartache, inviting listeners to lean in and try to untangle McMahon's lyrics through her downcast mumbling. Sadly, those same mumbled vocals sometimes become a hindrance during the slower sections of the album, distracting from the otherwise well-written songs. Still, delivery affectations aside, Salt serves as a solid introduction to this sensitive and engaging artist.

All the restless energy adds up to a few too many diversions.

The rest of the record is filled with an invigorating amount of passion, noise, and power that impressively takes their roots and influences to a new place. Not bad for a debut album; it bodes very well for further endeavors.

One can't help but think that just a little bit more spice might have elevated all of these beautiful ideas out of the trappings of their now painfully insular song structures.

Megafaun are just as taken by quietly tortured dark-night-of-the-soul whisperings, lo-fi oddities, and shards of feedback shade as they are of banjos and summertime evenings, giving Gather, Form and Fly a bit of an unsettled edge at various points.

How Do You Burn? suggests he needs a fiercer and more energetic team of underlings if he's going to remain a force to be reckoned with.

If nothing on Antifogmatic is quite that ambitious, nevertheless in track after track Thile leads the band through labyrinthine arrangements that shift tempos and instrument groupings, over which he sings abstract lyrics in a slightly disembodied high tenor voice.

There are points throughout these works where Tesfaye is distinctively gripping, supplying deadly hooks and somehow singing for his life despite the cold blood flowing through his veins.

More Life is another overly serious, musically uninteresting effort.

The record gets better when the sci-fi murk lifts and a song comes into focus, which happens more often on the second half, when Simpson relaxes enough to offer up a bit of good ZZ Top funk ("Best Clockmaker on Mars") and a blues shuffle ("Mercury in Retrograde"). But songs aren't the point of Sound & Fury. As the title makes plain, it's all about the sound and fury, noise that grabs hard and eventually softens its grip.

As it stands, it's a hard album to get your head around and it's a hard album to fully embrace.

The Starlight Mints weren't excessively ambitious in the studio and the coolness of Built on Squares makes for a pleasant listen while capturing a band in the making.

Older Than My Old Man Now contains some excellent work when Wainwright's not putting on false bravado or bullshitting, but ultimately, this is for his hardcore fans rather than casual ones.

It's hard to see why most of this album exists beyond letting Ashworth explore and recreate two kinds of music she obviously loves to distraction. Whether anyone should follow along on her quest is up to their tolerance for sift rock platitudes and hard rock cliches.

A Dream Is All We Know mixes up its subjects of study but chooses obsessively detailed replication over the hints of originality and vulnerable emotions that start emerging when the Lemon Twigs let their guard down.

The most natural and relaxed John Hiatt album in years...Hiatt's voice has never sounded better; its course edges sometimes straining for high notes works perfectly with this craggy, unpolished music.

Barry Johnson still knows how to write a sharp hook; they are just dulled by the lifeless production and the cookie-cutter approach. Only a couple of the tracks land.

As they're both charismatic singers with a way with an elliptical melody, it's pleasant enough, but by the time its 45 minutes wrap up, Lotta Sea Lice feels like a party where the hosts are having a much better time than their guests.

Taking disparate elements from their collective record collection, mashing them up, and spitting them out... the members of Silkworm nonetheless end up sounding like few other rock bands of their time while hardly sounding like a cover band revue.

The album isn't a total disaster, though, there are a few songs that manage to overcome the record's flaws and deliver some excitement.

While perhaps not on par with De La Soul falling from 3 Feet High and Rising to De La Soul Is Dead, this is almost as disappointing a plummet from Day-Glo genius to drab everyday product.

Youth and Young Manhood isn't sonically adventurous, but in the new-millennium pop realm, some greasy licks sure sound good.

While the band might be adjusting after a shake-up like losing a singer, they've still managed to create another riff-fest that, while not a throwback to their older sound, has them continuing down their current path without much trouble.

Bookended by a pair of moody cuts replete with intoned prayers spoken in the background, Abandoned plays to the severity of the Catholic faith, and if Defeater's thematic tendencies have begun to wear a bit thin, they still manage to pack a pretty big punch on a musical level.

Unfortunately, though, too much of Show Your Bones just isn't that interesting, even if it was born from genuine heartache instead of sass and attitude.

Gibson's reedy voice lacks power, especially when she forces the Ella Fitzgerald affectations, but when she dials back the theatrics and exposes the talented singer/songwriter within, as she does on the sweet and soulful "Milk-Heavy, Pollen-Eyed," the results are downright magical.

Ultimately landing like a skill set in progress more than an artist fully formed, Super Monster is nevertheless sweet and full of winsome promise.

Lacking rhythmic hypnotism and relatable most to those who are experiencing solitude created by romantic desertion, this is not your mother's Sade album.

An album that continues very much in the melancholy vein of its predecessor while taking a generally looser approach to arrangements.

Unfortunately, the forced and false-sounding songs outnumber these bright spots by a wide margin.

It comes off a little too sweet, much like running through an ice cream shop and sampling all the flavors rather than eating a proper dinner.

While it's hard not to wish there were a surprise or two along the way, the familiar warmth certainly has its charms, too.

Most of this stuff is just too damn weird for all but the most experimental music listener.

Its flame flickers at best, and the feeling of deja vu that pervades the album means that Los Campesinos! need to change something before they hit the studio again, or the next record will be an even more faded copy of their glorious early days.